Greatest general ever?

Best general?

  • Genghis

    Votes: 16 16.8%
  • Napoleon

    Votes: 16 16.8%
  • Alexander

    Votes: 20 21.1%
  • Caesar

    Votes: 7 7.4%
  • Frederick

    Votes: 10 10.5%
  • Hannibal

    Votes: 19 20.0%
  • Belisarius

    Votes: 2 2.1%
  • Subutai

    Votes: 5 5.3%

  • Total voters
    95
Would that it be just these type of threads where such remarks (in fairness not just from you - that one just stood out) appear.
 
I'm with Traitorfish. Doubtless the best, if measured with any fairness, would turn out to be some Kenyan or Irish chieftan from a thousand years ago or something.

Alexander. No. Read between the lines in the accounts, guys like Parmenion were actually the ones behind the military decisions. I mean, a boy a great general? If it sounds fabulous, it is almost certainly is. But we as humans love our myths, particularly myths about "great men". Would Genghis Khan have been so great in charge of village x of 7th century bc Lake Van fighting and incursion from village y? Or is he so great because of the superiority inherent in Mongol soldiers vis-a-vis other Eurasians? If Napoleon was so great, how come he lost at Waterloo, and how come he led so many hundreds of thousands of Frenchies to their deaths; how come he lost, when France was far and away already the biggest and most powerful state in Europe at the time?
 
Pangur Bán;11307080 said:
I'm with Traitorfish. Doubtless the best, if measured with any fairness, would turn out to be some Kenyan or Irish chieftan from a thousand years ago or something.

:mischief:
 
Hm.. Why didn't Tamerlane make the list?
 
Pangur Bán;11307080 said:
If Napoleon was so great, how come he lost at Waterloo

Oh aye. If Chrurchill was such a great politician, how did he ever lose an election? If Jonah Lomu was such a great contact player, how come he got dumped on his backside by Josh Lewsey in 1998?
 
@PCH, we always enjoy the anachronisms of 19th century paintings, but would love to know here how the three lions of Aquitaine ended up on Brian Boru's shield?

Oh aye. If Chrurchill was such a great politician, how did he ever lose an election?

indeedie. :p
 
Why this guy is not on the list?:


Link to video.

Khalid Ibn Walid (a commander from the period of Arab conquests):

"Khalid is said to have fought around a hundred battles, both major battles and minor skirmishes, during his military career. Having remained undefeated, this fact makes him one of the finest generals in history, (...)"

"I fought in so many battles seeking martyrdom that there is no place in my body but have a stabbing scar by a spear, a sword or a dagger, and yet here I am, dying on my bed like an old camel dies. (...)"
- Khalid ibn Walid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Yarmouk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests
 
Oh aye. If Chrurchill was such a great politician, how did he ever lose an election?
Given that Churchill managed to lose Dundee- one of the most staunchly Liberal cities in Britain, and certainly the most staunchly Liberal city in Scotland- to the Scottish Prohibition Party, of all people, what makes you so sure that he was a "great politician"?
 
Given that Churchill managed to lose Dundee- one of the most staunchly Liberal cities in Britain, and certainly the most staunchly Liberal city in Scotland- to the Scottish Prohibition Party, of all people, what makes you so sure that he was a "great politician"?

Personally I don't think anyone who led through the war so effectively as Churchill did could ever have won an election in a weary nation longing for peace.
 
Pangur Bán;11307080 said:
Alexander. No. Read between the lines in the accounts, guys like Parmenion were actually the ones behind the military decisions. I mean, a boy a great general? If it sounds fabulous, it is almost certainly is. But we as humans love our myths, particularly myths about "great men". Would Genghis Khan have been so great in charge of village x of 7th century bc Lake Van fighting and incursion from village y? Or is he so great because of the superiority inherent in Mongol soldiers vis-a-vis other Eurasians? If Napoleon was so great, how come he lost at Waterloo, and how come he led so many hundreds of thousands of Frenchies to their deaths; how come he lost, when France was far and away already the biggest and most powerful state in Europe at the time?

There's literally no part of this paragraph that didn't appall me.
 
Napoleon. Becouse of the circumstances. French revolution and
French victories on the batelfields has moved Europe few centuries ahead.
 
Pangur Bán;11307839 said:
@PCH, we always enjoy the anachronisms of 19th century paintings, but would love to know here how the three lions of Aquitaine ended up on Brian Boru's shield?
He conquered it, probably.
 
Would you like me to begin by addressing your vast amount of factual inaccuracies, or your various non sequitors that link your factual inaccuracies together to form your invalid conclusions?
 
Pangur Bán;11307080 said:
(1) Alexander. No. Read between the lines in the accounts, guys like Parmenion were actually the ones behind the military decisions. I mean, a boy a great general? If it sounds fabulous, it is almost certainly is. But we as humans love our myths, particularly myths about "great men". (2) Would Genghis Khan have been so great in charge of village x of 7th century bc Lake Van fighting and incursion from village y? (3) Or is he so great because of the superiority inherent in Mongol soldiers vis-a-vis other Eurasians? (4) If Napoleon was so great, how come he lost at Waterloo, and how come he led so many hundreds of thousands of Frenchies to their deaths; how come he lost, when France was far and away already the biggest and most powerful state in Europe at the time?

Categorized by how I respond to them.

(1) Your thesis here is that [a] one can read the historical accounts of Alexandros III and conclude that he did not make his own military decisions. You're going to have to provide some really sweet citations for this. You further assert that people are gullible to even think that "a boy" would make a great general, even though he was responsible for major victories between when he was a cavalry commander at the age of 18 at Chaeronea, and further won victories until the conclusion of his military career when he was 30. I can name a lot of well-attested generals between those ages.

(2) Your argument here is that circumstances play a significant part in whether we consider one to be good military commander. Yes, this is true.

(3) The Mongols were indeed famous for being excellent horsemen, but there were full-time professional cavalry in a lot of places conquered by the Mongols, so discussing "superiority inherent in Mongol soldiers" seems ludicrous unless you're going to invoke silly 19th/early 20th century historical theories of rise-and-fall narratives which proclaimed that history is "driven" by the "rise and fall" of civilizations dependent upon technological progress, yada yada.

(4) Your knowledge of Napoleon, and his era, is astonishingly poor. Firstly, allow me to address your last sentence, where you say that Napoleon's final defeat is evidence of his mediocre/poor military skills because "France was far and away already the biggest and most powerful state in Europe." This is actually not the case. In the wars of the 18th century, in which Napoleon attained his military career in the final decade, French continental warfare was largely fought over less than 200 square kilometers. This is because there were no battles of annihilation before Napoleon (save for the rare folk like John Churchill, who as I hope I will demonstrate, don't hold a candle to Napoleon). Engagements weren't to destroy the enemy army, they happened so one side could gain a more favorable (i.e., maneuverable) movement pattern after the battle was over in order to siege important places like fortresses and bridges, for which control of were extremely valuable in war negotiations. Thus, Louis XIV fought -- what, seven? -- wars in during his 70+ year-long reign, all of which successful for France, and he annexed a total amount of territory about the size of Switzerland.

In comes Napoleon. When he was first given charge of a military campaign, which was against Piedmont and the Habsburg Monarchy in 1796, he commanded an army of 37,000 French troops and rapidly conquered northern Italy because he disallowed the 52,000 troops of his enemies to coalesce into a single engagement. In a year, he ended the First Coalition by entering Venice and basically dictated Austria's terms of surrender to them. At this point, France was NOT "far and away already the biggest and most powerful state in Europe." The French Directory was on the verge of bankruptcy, and in actuality, it was probably only saved from economic collapse because Napoleon shipped an insane amount of Italian booty back to Paris. After severely blundering up the Middle Eastern expedition, Napoleon returned to France and proceeded to -- in the course of 13 years as consul and emperor -- conquer everything up to Moscow. And I remind you, wars prior to Napoleon were fought over and for areas the size of Belgium.

So why did Napoleon lose at Waterloo? He was always a bit of a narcissist and loved his over-the-top plans, such as the utterly ridiculous Middle Eastern expedition (which the French Directory only agreed to to get Napoleon off of the continent), and the Waterloo Campaign, which was just a bad idea from the get go. He also gets a lot of flack for the French defeats in the Peninsula and in Russia, though I am less critical of these, since they were (to my knowledge) the largest military operations in history up until those points and simply couldn't be micromanaged effectively; they were winnable wars I think, but a lot of bad decisions (mostly because no commander had ever presided over operations those large before) lead to eventual defeat for the French Empire. Nevertheless, I freely admit that all of these were large blunders and stains on his career. That being said, Napoleon could pretty much do whatever the hell he wanted to after his crushing of five Allied armies during the Third Coalition -- two of which he captured by marching his army so fast that he arrived at the rear of Ulm before the Habsburg armies were even properly mobilized, and three of which he destroyed by a brilliant fake-out at the Battle of Austerlitz. The Ulm campaign invented the turning movement, which has been the golden apple for all theoretical warfare since then.

Anybody that says they don't think Napoleon was a great commander has immediately told me that they know nothing about military history. Napoleon is military history. I hate him quite a bit and you won't find a more vehement criticism of his treatment of the Haitians and European diplomacy than from me, but I still admit that he is the Genesis 1:1. He completely rewrote how wars are fought. Everything that came after the Third Coalition was about figuring just what the hell Napoleon was doing and how to best him at it. The armies that destroyed the French Empire in the Sixth and Seventh Coalitions were organized according to how Napoleon organized his own armies, and their General Staffs, just like Napoleon's. All of the non-French generals that rebuilt their nations' armies and eventually entered Paris in 1814 were personally defeated by Napoleon, which lead to an intellectual renaissance in their war academies between and after the Napoleonic Wars: Gneisenau and Scharnhorst at Jena-Auerstedt; Archduke Karl during the Second Coalition (I believe, don't quote me on that); and Barclay de Tolley and Bennigsen at Eylau and Friedland. If you want to see how much an effect Napoleon had on warfare, the Waterloo Campaign is the very best to examine. The Prussian army stationed in western Europe was a Landwehr attachment and organized according to pre-French Revolution standards; and despite outnumbering the French by a good (off of the top of my head) 10,000 at Ligny, was thoroughly disintegrated without any tactical magicianery beyond a mere frontal engagement. That the Prussian army was even in an organizational state after this is a testament to just how skilled Napoleon's enemies were at this point -- I happen to think Gneisenau is also one of the best military commanders in history, but he himself was just improving upon the model that Napoleon and Louis-Alexandre Berthier made for how a staff should manage an army.

Napoleon is probably the greatest military commander that's ever lived. He just re-wrote the book of war. Campaign strategy, battle tactics, application of innovative stuff, Generals Staff management, army organization, philosophy of war--everything was reinvented by Napoleon. Look after his time and you'll see just how much influence he had. Clausewitz, Jomini, Moltke, Skobelev, Joffre, Guderian; these are all great generals that obsessed over the ideas and minutiae of Napoleon's campaigns and eventually produced similarly staggering effects in their respective militaries and staff academies. To say that Napoleon is a bad commander because he was defeated in the end is pure nonsense. Yes, he made a lot of mistakes, but the amount of genius he poured out has never been and probably will never be matched again. You don't have to agree with me that he's the #1, since I'm willing to acknowledge just how colossal his defeats were, but he's doubtlessly in the very top league, howsoever you choose to categorize military commanders.
 
I would also like to point out that, on top of LS's fantastic post above, the idea that Napoleon was a bad general because he lost at Waterloo is patently ridiculous, seeing as how the battle was still very much up in the air until the Prussians showed up. And they showed up because one of Napoleon's subordinates screwed the pooch, not Napoleon.
 
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